Justice Department Fights Release Of Secret Court Opinion On Law That Underpins PRISM Program

[DirkGently]

11. This is the inescapable problem.

No one can self-police abuse of power. The entire idea is ridiculous, which is why it came from the Bush administration. They rationalized, quite obviously in bad faith, that national security gives the executive near-unlimited power, including the power to decide that even any questions about its own wrongdoing could be classified.

That's the core battle that's been going on since Bush. Does anyone get to see how the Executive is governing itself on issues of Executive power and Constitutional rights?

Bush said, "No." Now the administration is saying the same thing.

It is an issue, it's not something we have settled before, and this leak story, whatever it's worth as a description of the actual programs, has raised the question once again. Does the executive get to, not only conduct its business in secret, but also tell us we may not even ask its interpretation of what is legal and what is not?

And it looks like they may now tell us what they think is legal, because they want to refute the specifics in the story.

How they go about doing that will be another story.